The effects of the economic downturn are being felt in CHina. The Times of India reports that with export markets doing poorly, labor demand is down ad unemployment has spiked which leads to renewed fears, on the part of the Chinese government, of unrest and mass incidents (CNN). Unemployment threatens social stability, and the problem is that its hard to get a handle on how many people are unemployed in china since so many of them are migrant workers.
Now the Chinese government actually wants to subsidize enterprises that employ unemployed workers–for each unemployed person they give a job to, the enterprise will be given 10,000 rmb. The policy should be in effect for the next couple of years, which is how long some economists are saying this financial downturn is going to last.
The point, according to the government is to share the burden with the enterprises. (曹思源：“(政府)鼓励雇用失业工人，企业出一点，国家出一点。因为工人要是没有工作就会面临很大困难，人心就不稳。”)
And the government is making sure that enterprises aren’t just shedding as many workers as they want. Shandong and Hubei are not allowing companies to lay off more than 40 people. And in Qingdao (locate in Shandong province), you are not allowed to lay off more than 20 people or more than 10% of your workforce.
Bet how much that more than a few companies take the money and then fire the workers?
Good to see China following the French model of making it impossible to fire workers, which in the long run just leads to very few being hired in the first place.